Update 1.04 ‘Engine Room’ is here!

ATTENTION! The content of this article is more than three months old and may not
be relevant to the current version of the game

With the release of the Update 1.04 ‘Engine Room’ Heroes & Generals gets a new render engine providing significant performance improvements.
But before going into details, we would like to extend our thanks to our community. During the last few months you have been very helpful in testing the new render engine on the prototype server and providing valuable feedback for the developers at Reto-Moto.

Better performance

In the community’s tests of the new render we have seen a 20 percent framerate improvement on average. In the latest test on the prototype server, 70 percent of the players that took part reported either a better or much better performance.
As you might know Heroes & Generals is running on its own proprietary technology called Retox, and with the ‘Engine Room’-update the render engine code has been completely rewritten.
This was done in order to optimize it for a modern dataflow by using advanced multi-threading techniques so it better utilizes multiple CPU-cores, improving game performance.

No more DirectX 9

Update 1.04 is a farewell to DirectX 9. We decided to end support for DirectX 9 based graphics cards. In part because most (if not all) machines with DirectX 9-only cards are too old to run the game properly. But more importantly the old technology served as a hindrance to game performance.

Mixed resolution rendering

The new render engine now has a feature where resolution and render resolution are split into two! This means that you can lower the render resolution while still keeping the user interface and overlays in your monitor’s native resolution. This is a way to get a better frame rate without hurting the graphics card too much. The game then scales the 3D render to fit the screen resolution. You find this in the settings in the action game, and you can always press F7 (default key) to see the current FPS and Ping in the action game.

The difference between the new render (left) and the former render (right) is not as clear on the screenshot above as it is when playing the game.

Crisper colors

The ‘Engine Room’-update introduces a new tone mapping system to Heroes & Generals providing crisper and more saturated colors in the game – so take your time to enjoy the sunset.

Temporal Anti-Aliasing

In this update you have the option of a new anti-aliasing method called Temporal Anti-Aliasing (TAA). What TAA does is that it uses the previous frame to anti-alias the current one thus giving a better looking image. The main visible effect is a much more stable image with less pixel flicker when in motion. This also helps smooth the image if running a lower render resolution than screen resolution.

Other Changes

Here is a list of some additional features in the Update 1.04 ‘Engine Room’.

When playing at night have a look at the sky – stars are now visible overhead.